Suffering. Nice, cheery topic, right? Well, hold on a minute and think about it. It's definitely relevant to today's society. Countless numbers of people are suffering. In your own town, city, state, country, and other countries. What makes them suffer? There's the obvious -- war, famine, disease, authoritarian governments, poverty, oppression. And there's the less obvious, the deepdownunderlying causes of all the obvious -- anger, violence, laziness, ignorance, weakness, selfishness, hatred, fear.
'I don't suffer,' you say. 'My family has enough money, I've had a good education, I've never gone hungry, I should be thankful that guerillas never burned down my house, murdered my family, and chopped off my arms with a machete.' Well, yeah, you should be thankful for that. But you still suffer. Anger makes you suffer (road rage, fights with loved ones). Laziness makes you suffer (low productivity at work, procrastination). You see what I mean?
'Okay then,' you say. 'I suffer. So what? It's part of life. Life is suffering, right?' Yes and no. Life involves suffering, but suffering does not have to consume life.
Suffering and Religion
Why do we suffer? What is the purpose of it? Buddhists say that we suffer in order to learn what love and compassion are. That without suffering, there would be no reason to love others, or to extend compassion to them. That if there wasn't suffering, then we would not understand or appreciate what happiness and the elimination of suffering is. That's a very interesting thought. You know you take things for granted -- everyone does. Can you appreciate being full without ever having been hungry? Can you appreciate running and walking if you've never been bedridden or weak or unable to stand? Can you appreciate the sun if you've never seen it, if you're blind? You can *say* that you appreciate these things, but you know that you don't always. So that is the Buddhist view of suffering -- suffer in order to love and appreciate.
The reasons for suffering in Christian doctrine are incredibly complex and muddled. I could just say that we suffer because we don't follow the teachings of Jesus and because that is what human life is -- suffering. The relief of suffering comes in the Kingdom of God after you die. That's the cut-and-dried version and it's also ridiculously oversimplified. Take, for example, the Book of Job. A righteous, God-fearing, pious man, Job, is suddenly beset by all sorts of suffering that just gets worse and worse. God makes Job suffer, and for what? Job didn't do anything wrong. In fact, God allowed this to happen to Job on what amounts to a dare (the adversary (satana) bet God that he could corrupt the righteous Job and God let him try). Job refuses to blame God, even when he prays and prays and never receives an answer. He knows that he hasn't done anything to deserve such torment. And in the end, God restores everything to Job and the book ends. No reasons are given. So whywhywhy? It is my humble opinion that suffering in the Old Testament (of which Job is a part) is required by those closest to God (e.g. the prophets, Job) because it is only through their suffering that they can truly touch God and truly demonstrate their devotion to him. After all, devotion and inner spirituality cannot be taken away from a person.
Suffering in the New Testament is somewhat different. First of all, no one really suffers except for Jesus. It's very sad that such a peaceful and beautiful man had to suffer so horribly in order to give his message to mankind. But though I could go into other reasons for his suffering (hatred by the Jews, intolerance by the Romans, man's abandonment of God), the main point is that he suffered and died for the sins of man. The Bible says this. The entire religion of Chrisianity is founded on this. HOWEVER, (and there's always a 'however,' right?) physical suffering is one thing, and spiritual suffering is another. Jesus suffered physically of course -- that was how he got his message across to mankind, since we're kind of dense. But did he suffer spiritually? I want to say no, because he is a man to be admired, whether you are Christian or not. Who cares what religion you are? Jesus was a man of peace. Peace is good. Therefore, Jesus is good. But I hope that he didn't suffer spiritually because he was the son of God -- out of all of us, he should be the one who should never suffer spiritually. But there is that nasty little line in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark: "Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?" (My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?). Very distressing. How could Jesus lose faith while he was in the process of fulfilling the point of his life on earth? I don't know. So I think I'm going to ignore that sentence until I find some priest or minister who wants to explain it to me.
Because this is just a discussion of a few of my thoughts on suffering, it will always be continued. There is no conclusion. Make your own conclusion. If you want, let me know what your thoughts on the topic are. They are most definitely welcome.